Ryder Cup: Harrington urges role for Monty

Padraig Harrington was not exactly telling Nick Faldo how to go about his business although Europe’s Ryder Cup captain might well interpret things that way.
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While giving his thoughts on this week’s European Open at the London Club, Harrington was asked if he deemed it important that Colin Montgomerie made Faldo’s side for Valhalla. “Personally,” Harrington said, “I’d want Monty on the team.”
There was nothing Faldo could object to in that, but it was then that the Open champion made a strong pitch for the role Montgomerie should be given if he does make the side. “I don’t think,” he ventured, “that you can bring Monty in and have him playing down in eighth place because that’s not going to work. He has to be in a position were you can bring him in and say, ‘Monty, you’re the playing captain and you’re out at No?1′.”
In other words, Harrington is among those who want Montgomerie to feel rather more wanted than he did at last year’s Seve Trophy when Faldo, to use one player’s words, “failed to accord him enough respect”.
Montgomerie is lying 13th on the European Ryder Cup points list. However, if he were to make a successful defence of his European Open title this week, he would be ‘inside’ the team, at least for the moment. His position regarding a wild card is that, at the moment, he would lose out to Harrington and Sergio Garcia, neither of whom has yet secured an automatic slot.
What Montgomerie did make plain was that if he were on the plane to Valhalla, he would not be short of confidence. “There’s no way,” he said, “that I can get there if I’m out of form.”
And in such circumstances, he would, of course, want to be playing the part that Harrington has visualised. “I’ll let Nick take care of everything else,” he promised.

Tiger Woods has not flown to this week’s AT&T at Congressional in Maryland, where he has traditionally served as tournament host. “Flying swells up my leg pretty good,” explained Woods, who limped to victory in the recent US Open at Torrey Pines before going under the knife on June 24.
His specialist, took a tendon from Woods’ right hamstring to reconstruct his left anterior cruciate ligament. As to the recovery time, Woods pointed to how “some are back to playing sport after six months, some after nine and some after 12″.
The world No 1 has been told that once rehabilitation is complete, his leg will be in better shape than at any time in the past decade.
Meanwhile, Kirsty Taylor, who had brain surgery in January followed by six weeks of radiotherapy, returns at this week’s Ladies English Open at the Oxfordshire. The 37-year-old Englishwoman is still waiting for the all-clear but she is desperate to get back to work.
Across country at the London Club, the men are playing the European Open in a week that sees the start of the drug-testing era.
Rocco Mediate spoke for many when he said: “It’s the biggest joke. You could sit in the parking lot and drink a fifth of vodka and you might get a fine. But if, say, you take Vicks VapoRub, you’ve got to go through the whole system…there’s nothing you can take to help you in golf.”